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The 20th Mediterranean Games concluded on Thursday with a closing ceremony at Stadio Erasmo Iacovone in Taranto, a port city on Italy's southern coast. The 14-day event, known as Taranto 2026, brought national delegations together for a final gathering before the handover to the next edition of the games.
Türkiye finished the competition with 111 medals in total, comprising 41 gold, 28 silver and 42 bronze, placing second in the overall medal standings.
Host nation Italy topped the table with 224 medals, made up of 74 gold, 78 silver and 72 bronze. Greece finished third with 71 medals, including 26 gold, 26 silver and 19 bronze.
Weightlifter Cansel Ozkan and artistic gymnast Ferhat Arican carried the Turkish flag during the closing ceremony.
The Turkish National Olympic Committee fielded 335 athletes at Taranto 2026, including 137 women and 198 men, competing in every sport on the program except handball.
Türkiye's result marks its second-highest medal count at the Mediterranean Games since the 2013 edition held in Mersin, a city on Türkiye's southern coast.
At that tournament, the country's second time hosting the games after Izmir in 1971, Turkish athletes won 125 medals in total, made up of 47 gold, 43 silver and 35 bronze, the best performance in the nation's history at the event.
In 2022, Türkiye finished second at the Mediterranean Games held in Oran, a city in Algeria, with 108 medals, consisting of 45 gold, 26 silver and 37 bronze. Italy also finished ahead of Türkiye at that edition.
With 41 gold medals in Taranto, Türkiye recorded its third-highest gold medal tally at the games, behind the totals from Mersin 2013 and Oran 2022.
Türkiye has taken part in every edition of the Mediterranean Games since the competition's inception in 1951. Including the Taranto 2026 results, Turkish athletes rank third on the all-time medal table behind Italy and France, with wrestling and weightlifting historically their most successful disciplines.
The Taranto 2026 Mediterranean Games ran from Aug. 21 to Sept. 3 under the motto "Embrace the Future," bringing together 26 nations and more than 3,800 athletes across 28 sports.
Italy was selected to host the games at the International Committee of the Mediterranean Games General Assembly in Patras, Greece, in 2019. Events were staged across Taranto and the surrounding Puglia region.
The Mediterranean Games are a multi-sport event held every four years for National Olympic Committees of countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. The 21st edition is scheduled for 2030 in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, which will become the first landlocked host in the event's history.
Organizers awarded a combined 1,853 medals across the games, including 588 gold, 588 silver and 677 bronze, decided in 273 finals over the two-week competition.
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